Ever and Always, Exactly Right
by ashesandhoney
Summary: A collection of short, and not so short, stories about Will/Tessa/Jem as a triad. OT3 Fluff.


Will felt the bed shift and opened his eyes to the wall. She lay down behind him and curled an arm around his waist. It wasn't a come-on, it was a hug, like they'd been together forever, not at all like the truth of three dates that had all ended in bed. He took her hand and pulled her in a little closer. He could pretend to be in love while he was half asleep.

She stiffened and started to pull back and he muttered, "It's fine, stay."

"Will," she said and he frowned because the voice was wrong. The girl he'd been seeing was local and this accent wasn't. He shook himself the rest of the way awake and turned to look over his shoulder at her. She'd pulled away from him and was looking at him with confused eyes. He still held her hand and he let go of it as though it were on fire.

This was not his girlfriend.

This was his roommate's girlfriend.

She was blushing and her eyes were wide. She had gray eyes, almost blue but not quite and she was everything he wanted and nothing he could have. Her hair was down and her makeup all washed off. He'd never seen her like this, she didn't loiter around their place too often and never like this. At least not anywhere Will could see her. His heart rate kicked up a little faster and his fingers itched to each out to touch her again but that was impossible. Nothing about his crush was allowable. He pressed it down and tried to ignore it.

"Do you often sleep in Jem's bed?" she asked after a moment of staring. She was biting her lip and trying to compose herself and it was adorable and just a touch vulnerable and his crush refused to be silenced.

"My date is a kicker and Jem usually doesn't care," Will said though if Tessa was coming over, he was going to care. Will couldn't remember in that moment why he was so late getting home. He had no idea what time it was but he felt like he had been asleep a long time.

"You have a date over and you're sleeping in Jem's bed," she said with the start of a smile. The scarlet blush was fading until she looked more amused than embarrassed. Will sat up because lying on his back looking up at her was not helping him ignore all the things he wasn't allowed to feel.

"She fell asleep and she kicks," Will said, "I swear, I'm going to have bruises in the morning."

Tessa laughed. That flash of nervous vulnerability had faded and she was herself. Wearing a tank top that he was trying very hard not to notice and with blankets pooled around her waist when she'd pulled away from him but confident and collected. She was so perfectly comfortable in her relationship that she could sit in bed with him without all the complicated questions of betrayals and boundaries that were rushing around Will's head. She didn't have any of those impossible thoughts.

"You stay here then, I'll wait for Jem out in the living room," she said with another laugh and she started to get up. He reached out and caught her elbow at exactly the wrong time. He unbalanced her while she was still tangled in the blankets and she fell back into him. She tried to catch herself and he tried to over correct and he dropped her into his lap. She looked up at him, startled and blushing again and he held her gaze for too long.

"No, you stay here, this bed is more yours than mine," he had started to say before knocking her down and he finished the sentence while she looked up at him. She pulled herself up out of his lap and he didn't try to help in case he made it worse again. He was far too aware of the smell of her hair and the warmth of her skin to behave normally. He needed to run away and relearn how to think but she was back to smiling and he never had her undivided attention and it froze him in place.

"You don't like your girlfriend very much, do you?" she said and the shift in topic took him so by surprise that he answered her honestly.

"No, not really," he heard himself say more before he had decided to say it.

"She's nice," Tessa said and it was half teasing, half a question. Will leaned back against the headboard and crossed his arms. He put as much space between them as he could without getting up or looking like he was drawing back from her. He didn't know how effective it was.

"She's perfectly nice," he agreed, "She likes dogs, is studying psychology, has a bad relationship with her mother and a good one with her sister, she is perfectly nice."

"You're a cat person?" Tessa asked.

"That's as good a way to put it as any other," Will said with a shrug.

Tessa lay back down on her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows to look at him. Will stared at her and hoped the alarm beating in his chest didn't show on his face. This wouldn't have made breathing hard if it had been anyone else. A girlfriend, a stranger, a nine foot ogre wouldn't have unnerved him as much. But it wasn't any of those things lying in bed with him. It was Tessa. The girl that he couldn't even want let alone have.

Sometimes it felt more manageable because they were friends and sometimes it was worse. Will didn't have many friends. He was awkward and covered it up with a brand of self confident sarcasm that chased most people away. Tessa found him funny and she would talk books with him and argue with him when he pulled up some obscure theory that made other people roll their eyes. He could still have those conversations. He could still see her but that meant the crush wouldn't die. His heart just kept finding new things to love about her.

For all they had in common, their friendship still hinged on James Carstairs. As far as Will was concerned, that made it more important. He couldn't stomach sharing Jem with most people. Usually he just wanted other people to go the hell away and leave the two of them alone but Tessa fit. Jem made jokes about how introducing someone to Will was more difficult than introducing them to his parents. And Will hadn't gotten along with a single date before her. Jem had brought home Tessa and she had spent half that evening reading through Will's bookshelf and had gone away with his recommendations tucked into her bag.

It should have been perfect. Should have been easy. His best friend had a girlfriend that he liked. She didn't get defensive when they disappeared into being Will-and-Jem and that strange place where the rest of the world didn't exist. She was kind and smart and loved him. Instead of being happy for them. Instead of just enjoying having a new friend, Will had instead gone and cultivated a crush the size of a small country that kept trying to convince him to do impossible things like reach out and touch her hair.

"Are we having a sleepover now? Should I go get the nail polish? I can never do my left hand properly," he asked trying to push the desire down with sarcasm.

"We're already gossiping. I could paint your nails if you'd like. You should probably choose a warm colour, a red or a rosy pink, because of your skin tone," she didn't flinch from his sarcastic tone.

"Really? Rosy? You think I'd look good with rosy coloured fingers?" he held his hand out towards her so she could see his unpainted fingernails. She took his hand and held it between hers and his breathing stopped altogether. Any further comments died in his throat. Her skin was soft and warm and she traced his nails with her fingers. She was delicate and careful and it felt intimate.

"You could do with a manicure, to be honest, pink or not," she said as she examined his hand. Her hair had fallen down around her and he couldn't see her at all though he kept staring at the fall of dark brown hair. There was a sound somewhere in the apartment and Will flinched like he was doing something immoral as Tessa turned towards the bedroom door.

"Your date or mine?" she asked releasing his hand and sitting back up.

Will had forgotten his date. Forgotten her completely. He'd forgotten just about everything but Tessa. The answer to the question though came pushing through the door to the bedroom before he could answer. Jem dropped a backpack and a grocery bag full of books on the floor with a heavy clunk that the downstairs neighbours probably did not appreciate. Jem looked up in the process of pulling off his sweater and paused to frown at them.

"We're about to start painting each other's nails," Will said.

"Really?" Jem asked.

"If there is nail polish anywhere in this apartment, yes," Tessa said.

"I don't think there is unless you left some somewhere," Jem pulled off the sweater and left it on the floor with his books. It had knocked his hair all askew and he came over to sit on the edge of the bed beside Tessa, still looking perplexed but not upset.

"I thought he was you," she said, "There was some cuddling, a lot of awkwardness, now we're having a middle school sleepover."

Jem laughed at that and guilt rolled through Will. Because for both of them, it wasn't an issue that she was sitting in her pajamas in bed with him. Here he was having terrible thoughts every time she smiled and he didn't even register for her or for Jem. It was nice to be trusted and it left him feeling outside of this thing they had. No amount of telling himself that that was how it was meant to be helped. They were a couple, he wasn't supposed to be a part of it.

"So have we got to the gossiping? Are we talking about Cecily's new boyfriend because I saw them tonight," Jem said and he climbed up onto the bed and pulled Tessa along with him. He sat up against the headboard beside Will and Tessa settled between them with her head on Jem's shoulder but her leg was pressed against Will's beneath the impossibly tangled blankets. She didn't kick loose or pull away.

"We are not talking about my sister and her cretin boyfriend or I will have to stab someone," Will said and his voice came out almost normal. He was pretty sure his heart beat should have been audible but he didn't move either.

Then they were talking about the cretin boyfriend and somehow the topic landed on some course Tessa was taking and Jem's project that had kept him at the library until after midnight and then bicycles and then dystopian novels. Will started to relax. His chest started to unknot. She was there and she smelled good but he could forget all the things he couldn't have when they were both here like this.

This was easy. Will didn't have to worry about boundaries or behaving normally when he had them both. The weird fled. It didn't stir up guilt or doubt when she elbowed him for being ridiculous because Jem was reaching over to shove him as well. When she dozed off, he and Jem kept whispering over her head.

In the morning, he wouldn't remember whose idea it was but someone suggested it and someone else agreed and when they half woke Tessa to ask she had just murmured, "Sure," before cuddling back down into the blankets and going back to sleep.

In the morning, he woke up too warm but too comfortable to move. He woke up curled into her with his arm draped over her waist. Her body fit in against his like it had been carefully designed for it. She had her head on Jem's shoulder and her hair was in Will's face but he didn't want to risk breaking the fragile spun glass perfection of this moment by moving it or shaking it loose. He let himself not care. His hand rested on Jem somewhere beyond her and most days when they woke up having rolled together, they just pulled away and pretended they hadn't.

Today, Will stayed where he was.

"You awake?" Jem asked.

"Mmm, yeah," Tessa said before Will could get up the courage to say anything.

"He's still asleep?" Jem asked.

"I think so," she said.

"Are you ok with this? Do you want to get up?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she said and they whispered to each other while Will pretended to sleep. His girlfriend had apparently slipped out earlier, Jem had heard the door. Jem had to phone his mother that afternoon. The conversation was the type of thing any couple might have first thing in the morning.

Jem was playing with her hair which pulled it back out of Will's face. Tessa shifted just enough to press her back into Will's chest. It felt like they drifted in that moment for a long time. When Will had been very small he had liked falling asleep on the couch while his parents held their adult conversations over his head. This had that same feeling of warmth and security and home. He wasn't really listening to the words they said, just the cadence of the voices.

Finally, Jem reached past her to wake him up. He tapped Will's forehead until Will blinked up at him. He did not want to wake up. Waking up meant facing the fact that he was curled around not just anyone but Jem's girlfriend. This was very different from a child falling asleep on the couch.

"We're going to make breakfast, do you want anything?" Jem asked. He had propped himself up on his elbow so that he could look over Tessa at Will. There was some wariness in his expression and Will realized that he wasn't the only one over the line here. This had been a conscious decision and now they were going to have to deal with it.

Instead of something normal and polite that would have smoothed over the strangeness and opened the door to going back to normal, Will said, "Only if we can eat it in bed."

Tessa let out a laugh and twisted around so she lay on her back and could look up at both of them. Her hair was a mess and Will almost pushed the strange detente into something entirely different by leaning down and kissing her. He stopped himself by looking back up at Jem and giving him the most unrepentant look he could manage. He was going to ruin everything but he did not want to go back to normal. He wanted to burn normal to the ground.

"I'll have breakfast in bed," Tessa said.

"I'm not cooking while you two lie here and snuggle," Jem said.

Before Will's anxiety could run away with that accusation, Tessa said, "No, you'll burn the bacon. We'll just bring it back here and eat it."

Then she was pushing Jem back and making enough space to sit up. Will reluctantly followed her. When the strap of her shirt fell down her shoulder, he slid a finger under it and pushed it back into place. He wasn't looking forward to the return of real life. He wanted to hide in this limbo forever. Everyone was going to wake the rest of the way up and realize that he wasn't allowed to touch her and Jem wouldn't smile like he found it endearing anymore and he would discover that he had ruined every good thing in his life.

It didn't happen immediately. In the kitchen, everyone still in pajamas, her hair hastily braided, Jem's a tangle, they bumped into each other cobbling breakfast together out of the paltry offerings of the fridge. Will had never enjoyed cooking anything so much in his life. Tessa leaned in against Will's shoulder and Jem picked her up and moved her when she was in his way. They laughed and talked and moved around each other and Jem kept invading Will's personal space.

Sometimes, when there was no one else around, they touched more than either admitted the rest of the time. But this wasn't just side by side while watching a movie or shoving matches that ended up on the floor or even falling asleep in the same bed. This was Jem leaving his hand on Will's back while he talked to Tessa about pancake recipes. This was Will leaning his head into Jem's shoulder while he laughed. They still didn't mention it but Tessa watched them in a way that said she saw it.

They collapsed back into bed with a tray of food that was mostly cooked properly and a pot of coffee. They didn't bother with plates or serving. They ate off of the pile of pancakes, passed bacon and the rather paltry attempt at fruit salad back and forth. And they didn't break away from each other. Shoulders against shoulders, knees thrown over laps, hands holding hands, fingers in hair, holding things out on the ends of forks until someone else took it in their mouth.

"Are we talking about this?" Jem asked at one point when the food was done but the coffee wasn't.

"You're going to need a bigger bed," Tessa said and Will coughed.

"So we're doing this again?" Jem asked.

Tessa twisted until she was able to look up at Will and he stared back at her. She was gauging his reaction. He realized that she had been doing it since she took his hand and offered him a manicure the night before. Neither the crush he was aware of or the one that he wasn't had been nearly as much of a secret as he had thought. Her eyes cut to Jem who was impassive. His thoughts and feelings were hidden away though his hand draped over Will's shoulder tightened just a fraction.

"If you want," she said with a bit of a shrug. Her confidence had faded, nerves sneaking in around the edges. Will caught her face in his hand and turned her toward him. She held his eyes.

"I could wake up like this every day," Will said and it got him a smile unlike any he had ever seen from her before. It was softer and shyer. Her eyes dropped away from his as it spread. She was blushing. His heart was beating too fast again but it wasn't with that same feeling of despair. He looked up at Jem and waited for him to smile first. Then Will leaned in and he kissed her.


End file.
